There are times when I wonder quite what possessed me to move so deep into the Welsh hills, writes blogger Emma Suddaby . . . and then I turn on the news and remember.

Apart from sheep rustling and the odd fly tipper, crime is not a massive problem up my neck of the woods.

But the rest of the country’s gone mad! And after a week we’ll never forget, I’ve come to the conclusion that rioters themselves aren’t the only ones to blame for the situation we’re in.

Finally, our Prime Minister puts his money where his mouth is and starts delivering on his promises for proper punishment for rioters.

And what happens? We bleat about heavy-handed sentencing, casting doubt on criminal’s just desserts. We bemoan a lack of community cohesion when the only lack of cohesion is in our own inability to support policy makers.

Parents say they want rights to discipline their kids again but the minute anyone does actually discipline their child, we’re up in arms. We criticised police reaction to the first waves of unrest, but when David Cameron – thinking quite independently for a politician – went to LA’s leading ‘gang cop’ Bill Bratton to talk tactics, police threw their collective dummies from the pram and flounced about disloyalty.

The majority in our great nation have been clear we want to see tough action against those who accept help from the state while at the same time kicking it squarely in the teeth, but when councils take us at our word, extracting rioters and their families from council houses, we wring our hands in sympathy, wondering how they will manage.

There aren’t many occasions when I feel sympathy for politicians, but this is one of those rare and beautiful moments. Because it simply doesn’t matter what they do next, someone, somewhere is going to have a problem with it.

Now is the time for standing together, shoulder to shoulder, behind whatever politicians can think of to solve society’s ills. Because not doing that, for so long, is exactly what has got us here in the first place. We must be seen to support authority, whether we wholeheartedly agree with every policy or not, we must grit our teeth and stand together.

Because the kids are watching – searching for that chink in society’s armour – and we must not ever give violent unrest such a gap in which to flourish again.

The one tiny pearl we can pluck from this oily puddle of scum is that it turns out community spirit never went anywhere; it was right there in the lines of men standing guard around their mosque.

Good neighbours aren’t extinct, they’re busy putting up the family next door who lost everything when rioters swarmed like locusts through their homes.

We may have lost our shops and post offices, our pubs and primary schools but we never lost our sense of community, our love for the people and places where we live.

We just have a few things to learn about standing together to protect them, for – not from – our children.